Through the looking glass

“Teenage girls’

self-esteem is more

than skin-deep…”

THROUGH THE LOOKING

GLASS

Richard Darlington

Julia Margo

Sarah Sternberg

with Beatrice Karol Burks

Girls are significantly more successful than boys in making the transition to adulthood and their outcomes, especially in education and youth offending, reflect this. Girls do better in their exams, more of them go to university and, for the first time, women aged 22–29 have closed the gender pay gap, with young women getting paid 2.1 per cent more than their male peers.

But alongside this success, British teenage girls experience worse rates of binge drinking, worse levels of physical inactivity and more frequent incidences of teen pregnancy than their European counterparts. In the course of this research, we found evidence that twice as many teenage girls as teenage boys suffer from ‘teen angst’.

This generation of teenagers has it tough, facing a more difficult environment in which to make that transition, especially in relation to the present labour market and to new technology, with online social networking opening a new and unregulated for their peer relationships and influences.

There has never been a more crucial time for effective and targeted youth policy. The Coalition’s youth strategy, due later this year, must address the growing calls for action to support young women and girls. Through the Looking Glass recommends this is achieved through tackling child poverty and youth unemployment; supporting parents at key transition points in their children’s development; and encouraging positive relationships with peers.

Richard Darlington is an Associate of Demos. Julia Margo is Deputy Director of Demos. Sarah Sternberg is a postgraduate researcher at the LSE. Beatrice Karol Burks is Head of Press at Demos.

Thr

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traditional, ‘ivory tower’ model of policy making by giving a voice to people and communities. We work together with the groups and individuals who are the focus of our research, including them in citizens’ juries, deliberative workshops, focus groups and ethnographic research. Through our high quality and socially responsible research, Demos has established itself as the leading independent think-tank in British politics.

In 2011, our work is focused on four

programmes: Family and Society; Violence and Extremism; Public Interest and Political

Economy. We also have two political research programmes: the Progressive Conservatism Project and Open Left, investigating the future of the centre-Right and centre-Left.

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Set in Gotham Rounded and Baskerville 10

Richard Darlington

Julia Margo

Sarah Sternberg

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Acknowledgements 7

Executive summary

1

Self-esteem

2

UK trends and the relationship between

self-esteem and outcomes for teenagers

3

Media images and self-esteem

4

Original polling

5

Drivers of self-esteem, conclusions and

recommendations

Annex: YouGov/Demos Survey Results

Notes 131

Acknowledgements

We thank Ralph, Bea, Susannah, Sarah K and Tina for all their help and support in the pre and post production of this research. Thanks also to Celia Hannon for her help in the early stages of the project and to Coralie Pring at YouGov for help with designing and running our commissioned polling. Thanks to Tim Watts and Ewan Wright for their research support. We are also grateful to Claudia Wood and Dalia Ben-Galim for their constructive comments and peer review. And to Louise and David, without whose commitment this project would not have been possible.

Executive summary

Girls are significantly more successful than boys in making the transition to adulthood and their outcomes, especially in education and youth offending, reflect this. Girls do better in their exams, more of them go to university and, for the first time, women aged 22–29 have closed the gender pay gap, with young women getting paid 2.1 per cent more than their male peers.1

But alongside this success, British teenage girls experience worse rates of binge drinking, worse levels of physical inactivity and more frequent incidences of teen pregnancy than their European counterparts. In the course of this research, we found evidence that twice as many teenage girls as teenage boys suffer from ‘teen angst’.

This generation of teenagers faces a more difficult environment in which to make that transition, especially in relation to the present labour market and to new technology, particularly online social networking via internet-enabled mobile phones.

There is currently a policy vacuum for teenagers in general and teenage girls in particular. This generation of teenagers is also being significantly affected by policy decisions as a result of the Coalition Government’s deficit reduction plan.

A series of campaigns and reports have helped focus the spotlight on issues affecting girls. The Campaign for Body Confidence, Cosmopolitanmagazine’s Generation Angry

This is coupled with recent criticisms of schools failing to help girls escape career stereotypes by Ofsted3_{and a warning}

from the Director of Public Prosecutions, Kier Starmer, that teen girls are now the group most at risk of domestic violence.4

The Coalition’s youth strategy, due later this year, must address the growing calls for action to support young women and girls.

As part of this report, Demos commissioned original polling with 16–19-year-old girls, which finds:

· More teenage girls are unhappy compared with last year. · Teenage girls from lower socioeconomic groups are less happy

than those from higher socioeconomic groups.

· Teenage girls from lower socioeconomic groups are less happy than they were last year.

· One in five teenage girls is suffering particularly severe angst, with money their main concern.

· Teenage girls are more worried about getting a job than doing well in exams.

· Older teenage girls think experience, rather than qualifications, will get them the job they want.

· Teenage girls are more confident about how others judge their character and personality than how they look.

· Teenage girls like dressing up but don’t think being attractive helps them get on in life.

· Teenage girls want more money to spend and a better boyfriend.

· Teenage girls prefer friends to family to cheer them up. · Teenage girls don’t want to be stay-at-home mums. · Teenage girls are closest to their mums but friends are also

important.

· Mothers are teenage girls’ most trusted source of health advice. · Teenage girls choose to spend time with friends rather than with

family.

· Teenage girls value the phone in their bag and the computers in their room more than anything else.

Our recommendations are focused on empowering young women and ensuring they receive the education, support and guidance they require to make a successful transition to adulthood. They are based on tackling poverty, supporting parents and improving teenage girls’ relationships with their peers, mitigating the negative effects of peer influence.

We recommend that poverty is tackled by:

· reducing child poverty year-on-year and meeting the 2020 target prioritising tackling youth unemployment, through either a more adequate replacement to the Future Jobs Fund or tax incentives for employers to hire young people who are long-term

unemployed

· reinstating reading and numeracy recovery programmes · continuing the successful ‘hot spot’ strategy to target teenage

pregnancy

We recommend that parents are supported by: · maintaining Sure Start on the principle of progressive

universalism

· focusing support services on parents whose children reach key transitions: from primary to secondary school and from school to work or further education

· extending parental leave and flexible working

· prioritising holistic early years and primary school interventions that build social and emotional resilience and improve literacy and numeracy

· meeting step-parents’ needs through tailored support services

We recommend that girls are supported to build positive relationships with their peers and that the negative effects of peer influence are mitigated by:

· promoting and protecting extracurricular activities

· supporting women-only and social-networked advice and guidance services

· boosting careers advice and work experience · improving messages around alcohol

1

Self-esteem

Introduction

Growing up and making the transition to adulthood can be a traumatic experience for teenagers and their families. In wider society, moral panic about the wellbeing of teenagers has always been a feature of social and political commentary – in no small part because of a poor understanding of the relationship between externalising behaviours and emotional development.

The observable physical changes that form a crucial part of adolescent development often encourage society to view

teenagers in a new light and to place a more adult set of expectations on them about their ability to control their behaviour and take responsibility for their actions. Yet the neurological developments that actually enable adult thought processes and adult behaviours such as reasoning, self-control and regulation of emotions take much longer to develop – usually not until young people are well into their 20s. Because of this, there is a concentration of behavioural problems (crime and antisocial behaviour, bullying and disengagement from educa-tion) among young people aged between 14 and 19. No wonder, then, that there is a perennial belief that youth are in crisis.

But there is some evidence that, in the UK at least, the sense of unease about teenage wellbeing is greater than ever, in the context of growing youth unemployment and changing social context in which youth culture – revolving as it does around technology and new media – increasingly confounds adults.

advertising, consumerism and wider culture impacts on their sense of self and emotional health – something we explore later.

Whether or not this signals a change in direction for the role of the state in ‘protecting’ or intervening in the teenage years, there is a clear need to review the evidence and come to a contemporary understanding of how self-esteem and wellbeing are developed and maintained, and what role different

institutions and influences play in their development.

This report explores what it is to be a teenage girl in Britain today and how it feels to be one. We ask what role self-esteem plays, how self-esteem is generated and what impact self-esteem has on how ‘successful’ teenage girls are in their transition to adulthood.

Throughout, we take a critical look at evidence from academic researchers and challenge public policy makers to consider the needs of this often misunderstood and ignored group. In the first chapter, we consider the current policy context. We then explore academic research into self-esteem. Finally, we look at what reliable evidence exists on the state of self-esteem for the five and a half million teenagers who live in the UK today and ask whether it is getting harder or easier to be a teenage girl.

Policy context

The last Labour Government (1997–2010) was highly active in developing and discussing an interventionist youth policy. From the creation of a national Sure Start network, the Every Child Matters programme and the Extended Schools Agenda, to ASBOs, behaviour orders, parenting contracts and parenting orders, minsters were clear that the state had an active role to play in providing services and ensuring appropriate interventions when the parenting of children went wrong.

teenagers with ‘carrots’ – like an entitlement to five hours a week of sport in schools and piloting a culture offer for creative activity through the Find Your Talent scheme. The culmination of the Labour Government’s efforts to engage with teenage angst and smooth the transition of youth to adulthood was the

creation of the Department for Children, Schools and Families, with its 2007 mission statement for active intervention: The Children’s Plan.5

At the end of its time in office, the Labour Government had commissioned reviews on the impact of the commercial world on children’s wellbeing (by Professor David Buckingham), on the sexualisation of young people (by Dr Linda Papadopoulos) and on child safety in a digital world (by Professor Tanya Byron).6

In opposition, David Cameron pursued this agenda in

speeches warning of the dangers of ‘inappropriate sexualisation of children’.7

Since the last election, youth policy has been shaped by the Conservative and Liberal Democrat Coalition Government. There is a slight divergence between LibDem and Tory

approaches. The Conservatives have signalled a change in focus of their youth agenda, to employability and economic wellbeing, rather than emotional concerns. The Department for Children, Schools and Families has been renamed the Department for Education and has been refocused, under the leadership of Conservative Secretary of State Michael Gove, on the reform of school structures (including the extension of academy status to well-performing schools and the formation of new free schools) and on a reform of the secondary curriculum to create an English Baccalaureate that places more emphasis on history and languages.

The Government’s flagship policy offer for disadvantaged young people is the pupil premium, a funding mechanism to give extra funding to schools depending on the number of children eligible for free school meals. This policy has been welcomed by teachers, although there are concerns that the funding will not always reach the children who need it and will struggle to bridge the gap left by cuts to school funding overall.8

Government’s approach: in March 2011 Conservative Children’s Minister Tim Laughton committed the Government to consult on a new youth strategy to be published this summer.9

Meanwhile, the Liberal Democrats have been engaged in a number of reviews of youth wellbeing, led by Nick Clegg’s children and families taskforce. Most notable of these is the work by Liberal Democrat Children’s Minister Sarah Teather and Liberal Democrat Equalities Minister Lynne Featherstone. Featherstone recently said that ‘the constant pressure to look impossibly perfect, be like skinny celebrities and conform to imposed stereotypes is creating a rising tide of low self-esteem, depression and anxiety among young girls’.10_{The extent to}

which there is evidence to support the contention that there is ‘a rising tide of low self-esteem’, and that ‘constant pressure to look impossibly perfect, be like skinny celebrities and conform to imposed stereotypes’ is creating it, is a key question for our study.

Children’s Minister Sarah Teather has been more measured in her comments and in December 2010 announced another review into the sexualisation and commercialisation of childhood by Reg Bailey, chief executive of the Mothers’ Union.11

Recommendations are expected in May 2011 and this report has been submitted as evidence.

Although it is too early to judge how far these various agendas will go in formulating a new youth policy, the

Government has also ordered the Office for National Statistics to develop new measures of national wellbeing.12_{The so-called}

‘happiness agenda’ is a government attempt to quantify non-material measures of wellbeing and is relevant to our assessment of self-esteem among teenage girls. This report has been submitted as evidence and we hope to see this review contribute to closing some of the data gaps we identify.

And while there is certainly the potential for a new agenda, the current state of youth policy leads us to conclude that there is currently a policy vacuum in the UK, with the Government waiting for the outcome of several reviews while proceeding with a deficit reduction plan. Recent evidence from the Local

local government finance settlement freezing council tax and cutting the central government grant. Young people are also being affected by changes to student financing, such as the abolition of the Educational Maintenance Allowance and the trebling of the cap on university tuition fees. Most significantly, they also face rising youth unemployment and the abolition of the Future Jobs Fund. We will explore the new landscape faced by UK teenagers in more detail in chapter 2.

The academic context

Within this policy context, it is worth considering the most recent and robust academic evidence to see whether it is informing present policy.

Starting from first principles, academics define ‘self-esteem’ in numerous ways, and measure it using a variety of different scales and measuring techniques. Consequently, considerable variation is apparent in academic literature emanating from different disciplines and significant gaps in data exist.

A key question is whether self-esteem causes positive behaviour or if it is generated by positive outcomes. Researchers who undertook meta-analysis concluded that ‘the design of much, perhaps most, published research means it cannot show whether self-esteem has a causal influence on behaviour patterns’.14_{As with much social science research, in the absence}

of causal data we are left to interpret correlations and

recommend policy solutions based on a wider understanding of what works in social policy.

Self-esteem is often measured via snapshot self-reporting questionnaires. Thus, it is reasonable to conclude that the ‘most informative evidence [on self-esteem] comes from longitudinal studies, following the same individuals over time’.15

Social psychologists Baumeister et al evaluating the concept explain:

self-esteem, by definition, refers to an unfavorable definition of the self. Whether this signifies an absolutely unfavorable or relatively unfavorable evaluation is a problematic distinction… Self-esteem does not carry any definitional requirement of accuracy whatsoever. Thus, high self-esteem may refer to an accurate, justified, balanced appreciation of one’s worth as a person and one’s successes and competencies, but it can also refer to an inflated, arrogant, grandiose, unwarranted sense of conceited superiority over others. By the same token, low self-esteem can be either an accurate, well-founded understanding of one’s shortcomings as a person or a distorted, even pathological sense of insecurity and inferiority. Self-esteem is thus perception rather than reality. It refers to a person’s belief about whether he or she is intelligent and attractive, for example, and it does not necessarily say anything about whether the person actually is intelligent and attractive. To show that self-esteem is itself important, then, research would have to demonstrate that people’s beliefs about themselves have important consequences regardless of what the underlying realities are. Put more simply, there would have to be benefits that derive from believing that one is intelligent, regardless of whether one actually is intelligent.16

This is an important distinction because it demands that we question both whether self-esteem is a good thing and whether it is caused or created.

For instance, an over-inflated sense of self-esteem might lead teenagers to overreach themselves, suffering failure or putting themselves into harm’s way. Equally, a lack of self-esteem might cause teenagers to hold themselves back or refuse to consider opportunities they felt were beyond their achievement.

So should our aim be to instill in teenagers an ‘accurate’ level of self-esteem? Or perhaps we should hope that teenagers will develop a ‘moderate’ level of self-esteem, so they might not get ‘too big for their boots’?

relationship is causal.17_{Certainly, a lack of self-esteem seems to}

be a risk factor.

Research in the USA questioned whether there was any evidence of a causal link between low self-esteem and outcomes in areas such as violence, substance abuse and academic

performance. Researchers concluded that there are indeed: ‘some indications that self-esteem is a helpful attribute. It improves persistence in the face of failure. And individuals with high self-esteem sometimes perform better in groups than do those with low self-esteem.’18

Baumeister et al also conclude that self-esteem is helpful but point out the downsides too. They argue:

The benefits of high self-esteem can be tentatively summarized in terms of two main themes… First, high self-esteem appears to operate as a stock of positive feelings that can be a valuable resource under some conditions. In the face of failure or stress, people with high self-esteem seem able to bounce back better than people with low self-esteem… People with low self-esteem lack this stock of good feelings and as a result are more vulnerable. Second, high self-esteem appears linked to greater initiative. We suggested that people with high self-esteem are more prone to both prosocial and antisocial actions (e.g., both bullying and defending victims against bullies), compared with people with low self-esteem. They initiate interactions and relationships (and perhaps exit them, too). They speak up in groups. They experiment with sex and perhaps drugs. They try harder in response to initial failure, but they are also willing to switch to a new line of endeavor if the present one seems unpromising.19

So self-esteem can be useful for teenagers but can also be associated with behaviours that might endanger themselves and others. Resilience and initiative are two qualities that we might seek to encourage in teenagers but evidence suggests that self-esteem might be a prerequisite for involvement in bullying, drug taking and early sexual activity.

important in the labour market.20_{Research shows a link between}

self-esteem and locus of control and demonstrates the

importance of these to young people’s ability to develop the soft skills that employers increasingly demand, like networking and teamwork. They also show that low locus of control correlates with involvement in antisocial behaviour.

Even if self-esteem is good for your teenager, is it good for others? Baumeister et al warned that ‘self-esteem confers some benefits on the self, including feeling quite good, while its costs accrue to others. Having a firm sense of privileged superiority over everyone else may well be a pleasant, rewarding state, but having to live or work with someone who holds such an inflated self-view may have its drawbacks.’21_{That said, many parents}

worry about the self-esteem of their children and find a teenager who lacks self-esteem is also difficult to live with.

Baumeister et al conclude:

Raising self-esteem will not by itself make young people perform better in school, obey the law, stay out of trouble, get along better with their fellows, or respect the rights of others, among many other desirable outcomes. However, it does seem appropriate to try to boost people’s self-esteem as a reward for ethical behavior and worthy achievements.22

So in public policy terms, self-esteem in teenagers is perhaps best used as a shorthand term to describe the experience of wellbeing and happiness during the transition to adulthood. While self-esteem is almost certainly helpful in achieving a successful transition to adulthood, it does not ensure it.

Gender differences in self-esteem

Self-esteem seems to manifest differently in boys and girls. Regardless of the level of self-esteem between genders (which we examine in the next section), the factors contributing to self-esteem and the ways in which teenagers assess and express it differs.

importance girls place on body image and peer relationships.23

More recent evidence from the UK, which we explore in greater depth below, suggests that family relationships are also more significant for girls.24

Thomas and Daubman find that girls’ self-esteem was significantly lower than boys’ self-esteem and that girls rated their relationships as stronger, more interpersonally rewarding, and more stressful than boys did.25_{They suggest that because}

girls are socialised to value relationships more than boys, and to use these relationships to define themselves, friendship quality may affect the self-esteem of girls more than boys. They cite evidence that the quality of peer relationships in general predicts self-esteem in adolescent girls, but not boys.

Thomas and Daubman also cite extensive research showing that girls and women consistently report greater dissatisfaction with their appearance than do boys and men and highlight evidence demonstrating a larger correlation between perceptions of physical attractiveness and self-esteem in females than in males.

Research suggests that the divergence between boys and girls in their satisfaction with their own physical attractiveness could be caused by the different way that boys’ and girls’ bodies change during maturation for boys and girls. As Thomas and Daubman put it: ‘during puberty, boys develop more muscle and move closer to the ideal masculine body. Girls, on the other hand, gain fat, moving them further from the socially constructed ideal of female beauty.’26_{Studies with twins in}

Finland also support these findings.27

Although the relationship between self-esteem and body image, appearance, and attractiveness has been well examined, few, if any, studies have been able to demonstrate a causal link between the two.28

This evidence gap has led researchers to conclude:

rule out the plausible conclusion that these beliefs are themselves substantially determined by self-esteem.29

Others concur that ‘the actual causal direction of the relationship between body dissatisfaction and self-esteem remains unclear for all age cohorts’.30

With such difficulty in directly attributing causation to varying levels of self-esteem, we need to dig deeper and wider in the quest for understanding what contributes to self-esteem. This report takes pains to move away from the easy answers suggested by some research that links body image and self-esteem. Instead, we attempt to take a more granulated approach to shed light on other potential contributing factors.

We begin by assessing the evidence of the extent to which self-esteem for teenage girls in the UK is substantively different from that for teenagers in other developed countries and from younger girls and older young women in the UK.

How much worse is the self-esteem of teenage girls in

the UK?

Despite what we might sometimes think, the most recent data show that, overall, young people in the UK are generally satisfied with their lives: 70 per cent of 11–15-year-olds rate themselves as ‘happy or very happy’.31_{Polling of 7–21-year-old}

girls in the UK shows that a third (34 per cent) claim to be ‘very happy’ most of the time and more than half (53 per cent) say they are ‘quite happy’ most of the time.32

Despite this, the UK is ranked at the bottom of Unicef’s global index of young people’s own subjective sense of

wellbeing.33_{While teenagers in the UK might seem happy, there}

are strong grounds to judge them as the least happy teenagers in the developed world.

Polling of children and young people in the UK reveals marked differences in the reported happiness and self-perceived sense of confidence that teenage boys and girls report.34_{There is strong evidence that teenage girls in the UK}

worry more than teenage boys.

Girls consistently report feeling sad and stressed more often than boys. Girls worry more about future employment,35

report that they have been losing confidence in themselves36_and

that they have at one time found it ‘difficult to cope’.37

Almost a third (27 per cent) of female 16–25-year-olds said they feel ‘sad’, compared with less than one in ten (9 per cent) of young men who feel ‘sad’.38_{It is perhaps not surprising that}

young women are more able to express their emotions but a significantly higher proportion of female respondents than male respondents also said they worried about their future employ-ment and felt ‘stressed always’. Almost half of female 16–25-year-olds (45 per cent) said they felt ‘stressed often’, suggesting a significantly greater degree of angst among young women.

Girls become less happy as they age through their

teenage years

Polling of 7–21-year-old girls in the UK shows that happiness declines as girls get older.39_{More than half of 7–8-year-olds (54}

per cent) say they are ‘very happy’ most of the time. But just over one in five (21 per cent) 16–18-year-olds and less than one in five 19–21-year-olds say they are ‘very happy’ most of the time.

The same poll shows that unhappiness also grows with age, with just 4 per cent of 9–10-year-olds saying they are ‘not very happy’ most of the time compared with three times as many 16–18-year-olds (14 per cent) saying they are ‘not very happy’ most of the time. Most worrying is the 5 per cent of 19–21-year-olds who say they are ‘not at all happy’, almost twice as many as in any other age group.

Other evidence confirms that self-esteem is lowest among teenage females compared with younger and older age groups.40

Twice as many teenage girls are suffering ‘teen angst’

as boys

Larger datasets also support this polling evidence.42_{For the first}

time, Demos analysis reveals the extent to which the self-esteem of teenagers in the UK differs between girls and boys.

For each measure, a significantly higher proportion of teenage girls aged 14–15 report feeling ‘worthless’, ‘unhappy or depressed’ or ‘low in confidence’, compared with male respondents.

The proportion of teenage girls (16 per cent) reporting feeling worthless ‘rather more than usual’ and ‘much more than usual’ was twice the number of teenage boys (7 per cent).

Most strikingly, almost a third (30 per cent) of girls report feeling ‘unhappy and depressed’ ‘rather more than usual’ and ‘much more than usual’. This was also twice as much as boys (15 per cent).

More than a fifth (23 per cent) of teenage girls report that they have been losing confidence in themselves ‘rather more than usual’ and ‘much more than usual’, compared with just over one in ten (12 per cent) teenage boys.

Why is the self-esteem of teenage girls lower than

boys?

Why is this? Can it be because of ‘the constant pressure to look impossibly perfect, be like skinny celebrities and conform to imposed stereotypes’, as Equalities Minister Lynne Featherstone has recently suggested? Or could it be that during puberty boys move closer to the ideal masculine body, while girls move further from the socially constructed ideal of female beauty, as academic researchers suggest?

Alternatively, rather than esteem relating to self-perception of body image, could it be that a mix of social and cultural factors is making girls more anxious and more unhappy?

Polling evidence suggests that, overall, women in the UK consider the following qualities as ‘important attributes in making a woman beautiful’:

· ‘confidence’ · ‘dignity’ · ‘humor’ · ‘intelligence’ · ‘wisdom’43

These seven qualities all scored higher than ‘appearance of skin’, ‘overall physical appearance’ and ‘facial appearance’.

But when comparing responses from women who are more satisfied with their own beauty against those who are less satisfied, researchers found that women who are more satisfied are significantly more likely to rate non-physical factors as important attributes. In comparison, women who are less satisfied with their beauty are significantly more likely than those who are more satisfied with their beauty to think that makeup and cosmetics make a woman beautiful.

Polling of teenage girls shows that almost half (47 per cent) of girls aged 7–21 feel that ‘pressure to look attractive’ is a disadvantage of being a girl.44_{But slightly more (52 per cent)}

feel that ‘girls are expected to cook and clean’ is a worse disadvantage and the worst disadvantage is ‘periods, body changes, pains of being pregnant and giving birth’ (67 per cent).

An in-depth analysis of the answers given by different age groups also casts doubt on the importance of the pressure to look attractive. The youngest girls in the sample (aged 7–8) are more disappointed by their perception that ‘girls have less chance to play sports and games than boys do’. This concern is expressed by a quarter (25 per cent) of girls compared with just over one in ten (11 per cent) who feel ‘pressure to look attractive’ is a disadvantage.

Slightly older girls (aged 9–10) rate the ‘pressure to look attractive’ as the fifth disadvantage of being a girl, with 40 per cent rating ‘girls have less chance to play sports and games than boys do’ and almost a third (30 per cent) rating ‘girls are expected to be mature and responsible’ as bigger disadvantages than the ‘pressure to look attractive’.

picking it as a disadvantage of being a girl/woman, but even among this age group it is not the top answer and the concern declines in the next age group (rated by 69 per cent of 19–21-year-olds).

The same girls (16–18-year-olds) are most likely to disagree (36 per cent) that ‘girls and young women are portrayed fairly in the media’ but even among this age group, just as many (36 per cent) ‘neither agree nor disagree’ that ‘girls and young women are portrayed fairly in the media’. Overall, slightly more girls and young women (11–21-year-olds) agree that they are ‘portrayed fairly in the media’.

When asked what ‘qualities make someone a good role model’ just one in four (26 per cent) of all age groups (7–21-year-olds) picked ‘attractive’. This was the ninth most popular answer (only ‘young’, ‘famous’, ‘married’ and ‘rich’ scored lower). The top answer was ‘helps others’ (61 per cent), which actually scored highest among older age groups (16–19-year-olds and 19–21-year-olds). Other highly scoring qualities were ‘brave/courageous’ (59 per cent) and ‘clever’ (58 per cent), with ‘overcoming hard times’ rating higher for older age groups (16–19-year-olds and 19–21-year-olds).

When asked what helps girls ‘be successful in life’, less than a third (29 per cent) of 7–21-year-olds picked ‘being attractive’. Again, this was the ninth most popular answer, with ‘being famous’ scoring the lowest among every age group older than 11.

So if the self-esteem of girls, teenagers and young women is affected by ‘the constant pressure to look impossibly perfect [and] be like skinny celebrities’, they do not seem aware of it, or they are not willing to admit they are conscious of it. They do, however, seem to object to ‘imposed stereotypes’ but these relate to ‘cooking and cleaning’ and ‘the chance to play sports’, rather than ‘being attractive’. So what other factors might explain the difference in the self-esteem of teenage girls and boys?

The majority of teenage girls rank relationships with family and friends as most important to their overall happiness.45_Of

relationships with family (63 per cent) significantly higher than those with friends (51 per cent), but this was reversed for male respondents (49 per cent and 55 per cent respectively). This suggests that teenage girls may be more family oriented than teenage boys and that their self-esteem may be more influenced by family, rather than by friends. Family certainly seems more influential for girls than for boys.

The self-esteem of young people who are not in education, employment or training (NEETs) is of particular concern. Young people who are NEETs are almost twice as likely as those in work or education to lack a sense of belonging in life. More than a third of NEETs (37 per cent) lack a sense of identity, and this figure rises to nearly half (47 per cent) for those out of work a year or longer. More than a third of unemployed young people (34 per cent) feel isolated all or most of the time, increasing to 45 per cent for those who have been out of work for a year or longer. Almost half of young people not in work (48 per cent) claim that unemployment has caused problems including self-harm, insomnia, self-loathing and panic attacks. Young people are twice as likely to self-harm or suffer panic attacks when they have been unemployed for a year.46

This is even more concerning because the number of young people in England who are not in education, work or training is at a record high at almost one million young people – more than 15 per cent of 16–24-year-olds. Around one in ten 16–18-year-olds are NEET.47_{Internationally, the UK is at the bottom of the}

league table, with only four European Union nations having more.48_{NEETs are four times more likely to live in a household}

where no adults are working but half of female NEETs are looking after a family, usually as a result of teen pregnancy (compared with only 3 per cent of males).49_{The prevalence of}

UK teenage pregnancy and young women’s employment prospects are considered further in chapter 2.

Other contributing factors highlighted in research include relationships with parents and parenting style,51_{peer group}

interaction,52_{and the experience of individual success or}

failure.53_{The breadth of factors relating to and affecting}

self-esteem, as well as the contention arising out of some of these claims, indicates the need for caution, rigour and an evidence-based approach to our conclusions. In chapter 4, we consider the likely drivers of self-esteem and draw conclusions and

recommendations for policy makers.

Too much academic research on the self-esteem of teenage girls has been based on single snapshot experiments with American undergraduates and led to casual conclusions based on simple correlations. The 1980s and 1990s was dominated by academic social psychology and media studies research that sought to find connections between teenage angst and teenage media exposure. In chapter 3 we critique this body of evidence and question the extent to which media images can influence self-esteem.

In the UK, teenagers in general and teenage girls in particular are an under-represented group in rigorous research studies. This has led to a data gap and has no doubt contributed to the present public policy vacuum. There is a clear need for more longitudinal studies, in order to fully capture how self-esteem and other contributing factors change over time – a conclusion supported by previous researchers.54

With limited resources at our disposal, we have sought to build on existing data and plug some of the gaps by exploring the inter-relationship between self-esteem, childhood happiness and wellbeing. We commissioned original polling of older UK teenagers (aged 16–19), undertaken by YouGov, in order to better understand their experience of their teenage years and to assess what they value and what they fear. In chapter 4 we analyse our results.

Every generation of teenagers is more technologically savvy than the last. But technological progress, growing affordability, media fragmentation, the accessibility of the internet and the penetration of internet-enabled mobile devices (including laptops, iphones and other smartphones) has substantively changed the modern teenage experience and the contemporary transition to adulthood.

In the next chapter we look in detail at UK data to try and develop a picture of what life is like for teenage girls living in Britain in 2011. We consider whether the current generation of teenagers is having a more difficult time than previous

2

UK trends and the

relationship between

self-esteem and

outcomes for teenagers

Introduction

It has become fashionable to talk about the economic and social wellbeing of the current generation of young people as being inferior to that of teenagers in the past. Several recent publications such as David Willetts’ The Pinchand the much publicised The Jilted Generationpaint a picture of today’s teenagers as burdened by the behaviour of previous generations and suffering the ill effects of an ageing society, sluggish labour market and climate change.55_{Commentators also point to the}

changing social context – technological developments and more prolific advertising – to claim that life is much worse for today’s young people.

Such claims form the backdrop to the analysis in this chapter: is it harder to be a teenager in Britain today than it was in the past or are those in this generation of teenagers the lucky ones? Does low self-esteem hold teenagers back? And if teenage girls in Britain are suffering lower self-esteem than teenage boys, is it stopping them from achieving, avoiding problems and succeeding in their lives?

In this chapter, we look at the following areas, as they relate to teenagers in the UK and their transition to adulthood: · educational attainment

· jobs and the labour market · graduate unemployment · career aspirations

· teenage pregnancy and caring responsibilities · child poverty and social mobility

· spending money and possessions

· suicide, self-harm and mental health · alcohol abuse, smoking and drug use · physical health

We attempt to evaluate the significance and prevalence of these issues and consider whether things are getting better or worse. We also consider evidence that shows causal links and significant correlations with self-esteem.

In general, we conclude that girls are significantly more successful than boys in making the transition to adulthood and that, in aggregate, their outcomes are significantly better than boys across the board. We also find little to link self-esteem as a causal driver in the negative outcomes girls suffer. Instead we find parental poverty and the influence of poor parenting to be a far more significant driving force, something we explore in greater detail in chapter 5. The exceptions are non-violent bullying, mental and physical health, teenage pregnancy and caring responsibility, where girls seem to suffer in a significantly different way to boys.

Overall, we find that the current generation of teenagers faces a far more uncertain future than previous generations, with job prospects in particular the worst they have been for decades. This chapter illustrates the gulf between the difficulties faced by teenage girls in their transition to adulthood and the present policy vacuum, identified in chapter 1.

Educational attainment

A review in 2010 by the Equality and Human Rights

Commission shows that teenage girls consistently perform better, academically, than boys.56_{There has been a steady improvement}

in the proportion of students getting good qualifications at age 16 (five or more grade A*–C GCSEs, or equivalent in Scotland, including in English or Welsh and maths). Girls are now ahead of boys in all three nations, a reversal of the situation for most of the post-war period.

compared with less than half (47 per cent) of boys in England. Girls outperform boys in nearly all ethnic groups. The largest differences were seen in ‘Other Asian’ and Chinese pupils where there was a gender gap of 14 per cent and in Black Caribbean pupils where there was a gender gap of 13 per cent.

The gender gap in educational performance opens up early. Girls are more likely to reach the expected national standard at Key Stage 1. The same is true at Key Stages 3 and 4, other than in mathematics at Key Stage 3 and science at Key Stage 4, where boys outperform girls by just one percentage point.57

The long-held performance gap at A-level between boys and girls is increasing and more girls are entering higher education than boys. Girls account for significantly more than half (57 per cent) of all higher education students, broadly unchanged since 2003/04.

Girls are more likely to do well – obtaining a higher second class or first class degree – and more women now have higher educational qualifications than men in every age group up to 44.

So with girls achieving far better qualifications than boys but having far lower self-esteem, it seems important to try and understand if self-esteem plays a role in academic performance. The evidence is unclear.

In their review of academic literature and meta-analysis of data Baumeister et al concluded that there are ‘modest

correlations between self-esteem and school performance’ but that these ‘do not indicate that high self-esteem leads to good performance’. Instead, they suggested that ‘high self-esteem is partly the result of good school performance’.58

As we saw in chapter 1, self-esteem may provide teenagers with resilience in the face of failure and make them more persistent in trying to do better. But after drawing on a substantial volume of research, it is only possible to point

Other researchers such as Pottebaum et al, using a sophisticated research design that tested a very large sample of high school students (more than 23,000) in the 10th grade and again in the 12th grade (the UK equivalents of Year 11 and 13), are even more sceptical. They concluded:

There is no significant causal relation between self-concept and academic achievement [in either direction], but rather that the observed relation is the result of one or more uncontrolled and unknown third variables.60

Evaluating self-esteem and other character traits, Twenge argued:

Self-control or the ability to persevere or keep going is a much better predictor of life outcomes than self-esteem. Children high in self-control make better grades and finish more years of education… self-control predicts all those things researchers had hoped self esteem would, but hasn’t.61

Analysis of cohort UK data in the UK supports this view.62

Self control, or ‘locus of control’ is not just important for academic achievement but also for avoidance of antisocial behavior and success in the labour market.

Jobs and the labour market

Research in the US by Mahaffy found that there is little correla-tion between female adolescent self-esteem and subsequent workplace success.63_{Using the High School and Beyond 1980}

Sophomore Cohort Study, Mahaffy examined the relation between gender, adolescent self-esteem, and three outcomes: educational status, occupational status and income attainment. She found a positive association between gender, self-esteem and the socioeconomic outcomes initially. However, taking into account social context and individual-level factors, self-esteem in adolescence is not related to women’s socioeconomic achievements.

established. Occupational success may boost self-esteem rather than the reverse.64

There is some good news for the current generation of teenage girls in Britain with regards to the workplace. But not much. The latest figures show that the gender pay gap

marginally decreased in 2010 by slightly less than 1 per cent (to 19.3 per cent from 20.1 per cent in 2009).65_{For women aged}

22–29 earnings are actually 2.1 per cent higher than for men the same age in the UK, although this is the only age group for which this is the case.

That is where the good news ends. Job prospects for this generation of teenagers are the worst they have been for at least two decades. The latest official figures show that the unemploy-ment rate reached 20 per cent among economically active youths aged 16 to 24, almost one million, the highest figure since comparable records began in 1992.66

The Chancellor announced 50,000 additional apprentice-ships and 100,000 work placements for young people in the March 2011 budget but this has to be set in the context of the abolition of the Future Jobs Fund, which was set to provide 150,000 jobs for young people. The Treasury shows that the new apprenticeships and work placements will cost £40 million over two years,67_{while the Future Jobs Fund was a policy to invest £1}

billion over two years to tackle youth unemployment.

With one in five young people now unemployed, teenagers entering the current labour market face the toughest conditions Britain has ever seen. There is also evidence that prospects are substantially worse for women than for men.

While previous recessions have seen employers make young men redundant before young women, TUC analysis68_{shows that}

unemployment rates among young women have risen much faster over the past two years. In the South West, the

The TUC analysis suggests that women in part-time employment, who are over-represented in the public sector, are likely to be hit by the coming round of public sector job losses. Just under 40 per cent of women’s jobs are in the public sector, compared with around 15 per cent of positions held by men.69

The latest forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility show that 310,000 public sector jobs will be lost by 2015.70

It seems that teenage girls in Britain today face the worst job prospects of all because of rising youth unemployment and public sector job cuts combined. They also continue to face a long-term gender pay gap and a motherhood penalty.71

A recent Demos report warns that while 10–15 per cent levels of youth unemployment has been the norm throughout the 1990s, the current recession and education failures risk making 20 per cent youth unemployment ‘the new normal’, with spikes well above this.72

The Coalition Government’s predictions for youth unemployment are highlighted in a prospectus issued by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) for companies and voluntary groups bidding to take part in the Work Programme to find jobs for the long-term unemployed.73_{An annex to the}

prospectus estimates that between 140,000 and 200,000 young people aged 18 to 24 will be registered as having been

unemployed for at least nine months or more between 2011 and 2012.

This at least doubles the number of young long-term unemployed. The forecast by the DWP suggests that the Government is bracing itself for young people to suffer

disproportionately from public sector job cuts and from the slow level of overall economic growth forecast by the Office for Budget Responsibility.

bottom of the league table, with only four European Union nations having more.75

NEETs are four times more likely to live in a household where no adults are working, but half of female NEETs are looking after family, usually as a result of teen pregnancy, compared with only 3 per cent of males.76_{Teenage pregnancy is}

examined in further detail below.

Graduate unemployment

As we saw in the previous section, more girls are going to university and are getting better degrees than boys but graduate unemployment is at its highest level for 17 years.77_{The poll by}

the Higher Education Careers Services Unit of almost 225,000 graduates (covering 82 per cent of those who completed an undergraduate degree in 2010) suggested that nearly one in 10 graduates are unemployed six months after leaving university – the highest proportion for 17 years. It showed that rising

numbers are taking jobs that do not require degrees, including as waiters and checkout workers. The poll also found that male graduates were earning a higher starting salary than females, in all regions across the UK.78

The most recent figures from the Office for National Statistics show that one in five former students are still seeking work up to two years after leaving university.79_{Their preferred}

measure of graduate unemployment has reached its highest level since 1995. The figures show that almost twice as many new graduates were out of work in the third quarter of 2010 com-pared with the beginning of the recession in 2008, when one in ten was unemployed.

A poll of 200 employers by the Association of Graduate Recruiters in 2010 suggested there were an average of 70 applicants for each graduate vacancy.80_{In the most popular}

sectors there are 205 applicants for each job.

Before the recession, more than a third (38 per cent) of teenagers agreed or strongly agreed. To test the latest sense of angst among teenage girls we commissioned original polling, the results of which are presented in chapter 4.

Career aspirations

The aspirations of teenage girls affect their performance in the labour market and the choices they make about which jobs to compete for. Recent survey-based research found that gender appears to be a more important differential than social class in accounting for differences in career aspirations. Boys are more likely than girls to expect to work in ‘engineering, ICT, skilled trades, construction, architecture or as mechanics’. Girls are more likely to expect to work in ‘teaching, hairdressing, beauty therapy, childcare, nursing and midwifery’.82_{These career}

choices have major implications for their employment trajectories and income levels.

Having children and raising families also has an impact. The proportion of women in associate professional jobs peaks between 26 and 44 years (at 19 per cent), tailing off subsequently to reach 12 per cent of those aged 56–59 years. In 2009 women held just over a third (34 per cent) of managerial positions, just over two-fifths of professional jobs, (43 per cent) and half of associate professional jobs (50 per cent).83

Overall women account for: · 83 per cent of personal services posts

· 77 per cent of administrative and secretarial posts · 65 per cent of sales posts

Although there are signs of improvement in women’s presence in the professions, this varies widely across professional groups. The proportion of women in engineering, ICT and working as architects, planners and surveyors remains stubbornly low with women making up just:

· 13 per cent of ICT posts

· 14 per cent of architects, planners and surveyors Research suggests that girls still feel pushed into

traditionally female roles and boys into traditionally male roles, when many of them would consider training or working in non-traditional areas.

Platform 51 suggests that careers guidance and work experience are particularly important for girls and boys from disadvantaged backgrounds, who often have limited sources of advice about the variety of jobs available and often have strong assumptions being made on their behalf about their future career paths.84

Teenage pregnancy and caring responsibilities

As we have seen above, teen pregnancy is a major driver for young women in Britain to become NEET. Half of all female NEETs are caring for family.

Spencer et al found a correlation between higher self-esteem and deferral of sexual activity.85_{By contrast, Baumeister}

et al canvassed a body of research that offers highly mixed results, including research to suggest that higher self-esteem correlates with increased sexual activity and risk taking.86_Longitudinal

research from the USA suggests that high self-esteem leads to more sexual activity among males but not females. Another longi-tudinal study of adolescents in New Zealand found no relation-ship between self-esteem at age 12 and self-reports of sexual intercourse by the age of 15.87_{In a survey of 1,000 girls and}

women, Kalil and Kunz found that unmarried teenage mothers were less likely than other girls and women to have high self-esteem.88_{In this case, self-esteem was measured after the person}

had engaged in sex and borne a child; in view of the prospective findings, Kalil and Kunz’s results suggest that becoming an unwed teen mother causes a reduction in self-esteem.89

But the teenage pregnancy rate in the UK has recently fallen to a 30-year low.91_{In 2010 conceptions among under-18s}

decreased by 5.9 per cent to 38.3 per 1,000 women aged 15–17. This represents the steepest drop in 20 years and is estimated to be the lowest rate since the early 1980s.

The chief executive of the Family Planning Association has warned that the scrapping of the Labour Government’s £280 million ten-year Teenage Pregnancy Strategy – focusing on hotspots of deprivation – is ‘a significant cause for concern’.92

Evidence from the Millennium Cohort Study suggests that the poor outcomes experienced by teenage mothers and their children may have more to do with the mothers’ disadvantaged social conditions than the age at which they have their first child.93_{Evidence shows that the teenagers who are most likely to}

get pregnant are from disadvantaged backgrounds. This suggests that many are choosing to have a child not as a positive option but because of limited prospects.

Evidence published in the British Medical Journalin 2009 showed that the main determinants for early pregnancy were dislike of school, poor material circumstances and unhappy childhood, and low expectations for the future.94

Care

Data show that caring for people other than their own children is also more widespread among teenage girls than teenage boys.95

By the age of 17, more than one in five (27 per cent) young people have some kind of caring responsibility. Just 3 per cent have children of their own. More than one in ten (15 per cent) of girls say they are taking care of children under age 14 outside their own home (unpaid). This is almost twice as many as boys (8 per cent). Girls are also more likely to be caring for adults over age 15 who are ill, disabled or elderly.

Research shows that most of these young carers (56 per cent) are girls, whose average age is just 12 years old.

Socioeconomic factors surely play a part in the reliance on young people for personal care. And it is clear that child poverty continues to be a major cause of teen pregnancy and NEET status, both of which appear to have negative impacts on self-esteem.

Child poverty and social mobility

Knies suggests that the comparatively low levels of life

satisfaction in children living in the UK may be explained by the relatively high prevalence of child poverty. But the research finds that ‘after controlling for other factors, there is no association between young people’s life satisfaction scores and household income, and none with either the household or child material deprivation indices’.97

This means that children of relatively wealthy families are just as likely to be dissatisfied with their lives as the children of poorer families. There is empirical evidence that parents shield their children from financial hardship by spending on their children rather than themselves.98_{But while poverty may not}

affect children’s life satisfaction, it certainly affects their other outcomes.

Children growing up in poverty are more likely to suffer cycles of deprivation and intergenerational poverty.99_{With social}

mobility in the UK stalling, this problem is more acute for this generation of teenagers than previous ones.100

The UK has one of the highest rates of child poverty in the developed world. Among 24 member countries of the

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the UK is topped only by the USA.101

The most recently published research by Save the Children UK shows that around 1.6m children in the UK are living in severe poverty.102_{Manchester has the highest proportion of}

Using the conventional measure of household income, child poverty rates in the UK have been falling over the last decade (from 22 per cent in 1998/99 to 11 per cent in 2008/09). But this trend looks set to reverse. Despite the Coalition Agree-ment committing the GovernAgree-ment to a national child poverty target, the Institute for Fiscal Studies is predicting that poverty for children aged under 16 will rise in 2011/12 and 2012/13.103

As we will explore further in chapter 5, parents who are materially deprived have been less and less able to develop the character traits required for success in their children. It is clear that child poverty is making and will continue to make the current generation of teenagers relatively worse off than previous generations.

Spending money, possessions and new media

The present generation of teenagers is widely considered to be more materialistic and brand conscious than previous

generations. This is such a serious concern that the Government has launched a review into the commercialisation of

childhood.104_{As we will see in chapter 4, our original polling}

showed that children’s self-esteem is strongly linked to their relationship with their spending money, material possessions and use of new media.

But the commercialising of childhood is mitigated by the extent to which adults, and specifically parents, are allowing children discretion over the material goods they have access to. If children are exercising direct discretion, rather than simply exercising ‘pester power’, it is likely that these children’s parents are putting the pounds in their pockets that are allowing them to become active consumers.

More than three-quarters (77 per cent) of children and young people receive an allowance from their parents,105_often

received slightly more than girls, but this does not accurately reflect the amount of money that children have available to them each week. The average earnings (for those with part-time jobs) were £28.10 per week for boys and £25.70 for girls.

From their diaries, researchers found the average 11–13-year-old was able to spend £36.75 per week.106_{Those aged between}

14 and 15 spent £43.38 while those over 16 spent on average £62.98 a week.

Where does all this money go? The most significant expenses for children and young people are clothes and entertainment.107_{Girls spent significantly more of their money}

than boys on clothes (72 per cent versus 35 per cent), accessories (43 per cent versus 10 per cent), magazines (36 per cent versus 22 per cent) and toiletries (39 per cent versus 4 per cent). Boys spent substantially more on games (48 per cent versus 10 per cent), sports and hobbies (36 per cent versus 15 per cent), downloads (19 per cent versus 8 per cent) and snacks or soft drinks (46 per cent versus 35 per cent).

The survey found that 16-year-olds spent the highest proportion of their money on clothes (61 per cent) and entertainment (60 per cent); 12-year-olds spent the highest proportion on snacks (58 per cent) and magazines (43 per cent); 11-year-olds spent the highest proportion on movies (46 per cent), gaming (48 per cent), accessories (39 per cent) and sports, hobbies and pastimes (37 per cent); and 18-year-olds, predictably perhaps, topped the poll when it came to spending money on eating out (46 per cent) and entrance fees to clubs (32 per cent).

The third highest category for what young people spend their money on is ‘saving’. Over half of all young people say they commit ‘most’ of their money to saving; 14-year-olds are the biggest savers, with 60 per cent saying they put most of their money away rather than spending it immediately.

Researchers writing before the global financial crisis had already concluded:

Children and young people also influence how their parents spend their money. They feel they have a particularly strong influence on food purchases, pets, presents for family and friends, and where the family goes on holiday. Nearly a quarter of girls (but only 15 per cent of boys) think they had a say in which house or flat they live in. Parents, perhaps as expected, disagree. Less than one in ten says their children have a lot of influence on what the family eats and only 5 per cent say that choice of family holiday is strongly influenced by where their children want to go.

Almost two-thirds of children aged 5–16 now have their own computer (62 per cent, including 42 per cent with a laptop and 7 per cent with an iPad).109_{Laptop ownership is up 10 per}

cent in the last year alone. Half of all 7–16-year-olds can now access the internet in their own room, up from two in five in the last year.

Equally significant is that one in five (20 per cent) access the internet on their mobile phones. Other surveys suggest that as many as a third of 9–16-year-olds are accessing the web on a mobile device.110_{Nearly all 11–16-year-olds have mobile}

phones, seven in ten 5–16-year-olds and half of 5–10-year-olds.111

These are likely to be due for upgrades over the next two years so these children will almost certainly acquire internet-enabled mobiles very soon. Around half (49 per cent) of parents with children under 18 who have internet-enabled mobile devices do not monitor their children’s mobile internet usage.112

More than 90 per cent of children in the UK use the internet, with the average child doing so more than five times a week, and spending two hours a day online (slightly less than they spend watching TV, although this is increasingly done online, via on-demand services).113_{Social networking is the main}

online activity for 5–16-year-olds, with the proportion social networking the last time they were online doubling since last year. Facebook and YouTube are now the top favourite websites across all ages.

social gaming sites are attracting children to take part in their safe interactive world, providing a springboard for the step up to social networking around age 11. Children flout the rules about minimum age limits, and their parents condone or actively encourage this.114

The way that this generation of teenagers relate to the money that they have to spend, the material goods they possess and their relationship to new technology is an important element of what makes them different from teenagers of the past. To explore this more extensively, we focus much of our original commissioned polling on these issues; it is presented in chapter 4.

Bullying and criminal antisocial behaviour

There is credible research linking low self-esteem with aggression, antisocial behaviour and delinquency.115_{But other}

academic analysis suggests that ‘the highest and lowest rates of… bullying are found in different subcategories of high self-esteem’.116_{The very latest UK evidence suggests that sibling}

bullying in the home can have a relationship to both victimisation and bullying at school and elsewhere.117

Evidence shows that not all bullies are the same.118_{There is}

a small group of so-called ‘pure bullies’ who bully others but are not victims themselves. But more prevalent are ‘bully-victims’ who are victimised themselves and at other times bully others. These ‘bully-victims’ are the ones most at risk of low self-esteem and behaviour problems.

The latest UK data show that more than half of all siblings were involved in bullying (54 per cent) and that the most common pattern across the UK was to be both victim and bully (33.6 per cent).119_{Boys were more often pure bullies or}

‘bully-victims’ while girls were slightly more likely to be pure victims. Researchers found that being victimised at home

significantly increased the odds of also being victimised in school.120_{Those who were either victimised in just one setting,}

their siblings and in school by their peers were ten times more often ‘unhappy’ than those not victimised either at home or in school. For those victimised at home and at school there is little escape from bullying. Consequently, they have more behaviour problems than other children.

Recent polling evidence shows that two-thirds (66 per cent) of 16–19-year-old girls think bullying is one of the ‘main causes of stress’ among girls their age, although this was the fourth most popular answer after ‘exams/tests’, ‘pressure to do well at school’ and ‘relationships’.121

Research for the EHRC points to gender difference for children’s experiences of bullying outside school with girls experiencing less bullying than boys, in both inner city and suburban areas. But they suggest that bullying among girls is far more subtle and therefore harder to capture through research.122

Large-scale survey data support this (LSYPE, wave 2). Almost one in five (19 per cent) girls aged 16 reported being ‘bullied, called names, sworn at or insulted’ in the last 12 months, slightly more than boys (15 per cent). More than one in five (27 per cent) girls aged 14 to 15 reported being upset by name calling (including by text and email) in the last 12 months compared with 16 per cent of boys.

Analysis by Demos (of LSYPE, wave 2) shows that almost twice as many (33 per cent) of those girls reporting being upset by name calling, compared with just 16.6 per cent of boys, said that they had been feeling worthless ‘rather more’ or ‘much more’ than usual, compared with just 16.6 per cent of boys.

But boys are more than three times more likely (7 per cent) to report being ‘mugged’ in the last 12 months, compared with girls (just 2 per cent). And boys were almost twice as likely (29 per cent) to report having ‘force used against them’ in the last 12 months, compared with girls (15 per cent).

EHRC data in 2010 suggest that teenage girls are

vulnerable to serious physical violence, above and beyond subtle bullying.123_{One in four women say they have experienced some}

age of 16. Over a quarter of all rapes reported to the police in 2009/10 in England and Wales were committed against children aged under 16.

Although levels of ‘less serious sexual assault’ have fallen dramatically in England and Wales since 2005/06, levels of rape have remained stable over this period. Levels of domestic and partner abuse recorded in crime surveys have fallen only slightly; the number of cases being reported to the police or referred for prosecution is increasing.

Research for the NSPCC shows that girls are more likely than boys to be the recipient of serious physical and sexual violence and that girls are significantly more likely than boys to state they have experienced some form of family violence: 29 per cent compared with 16 per cent.124

The link between violent victimisation and offending in young people is highlighted by research for Victim Support UK.125_{This suggests that aspects of a young person’s lifestyle}

and disposition were likely to increase their chances of becoming both a victim of crime and an offender. These